


Ache of the Living

by Sword_Kallya



Category: Batman - All Media Types
Genre: Gen, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Nightwing 93 References, Protective Batfamily (DCU)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-09
Updated: 2021-03-09
Packaged: 2021-03-16 07:07:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,295
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29946312
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sword_Kallya/pseuds/Sword_Kallya
Summary: Dick Grayson shows up at Jason’s safehouse door, asking for a gun.
Relationships: Dick Grayson & Jason Todd
Comments: 11
Kudos: 231





	Ache of the Living

**Author's Note:**

> Title from _The Man Moves Earth_ by Cathy Song.

Jason opened the door to a Dick Grayson who looked _absolutely wrecked_. “I need to borrow a gun.”

Jason blinked rapidly. That drug bust had been _way too early_ this morning. Maybe he’d get lucky, and this would be some kind of sleep deprivation induced hallucination. “Don’t you have your piece from the BPD?”

“Left it in Bludhaven.” Dick was jittery, glancing over his shoulder, scanning exits from the hallway of the ratty apartment complex. He looked like he hadn’t slept in days, and probably hadn’t showered in weeks. He looked like he was about to shake out of his skin. “Jason, _please,_ I need something. _Please.”_

“How about you come inside.” Jason held the door open for him. Then he shut it. Looked at Dick, vibrating quietly in the kitchen. Locked the door, and activated the Bat-designed security system.

Dick’s vibration speed dropped by a few dozen Hertz. Jason pulled an (unloaded) pistol from a drawer and handed it to him, and he relaxed even more. “What’s this about, Dickface? You’ve been quiet for two weeks now and suddenly you appear again asking for a gun?” Jason sat on the couch. Dick did too, once he had, but only on the edge, so he could jump up at any moment.

“I, I can’t…” Dick bit his lip and looked down at the gun in his hands. The glint in his eye made Jason very glad he’d made sure it wasn’t loaded. Normally, Dick would have noticed, but normally Dick didn’t show up _asking for guns._ “I can’t. Talk about it. It’s not… I can’t.”

“Okay then.” Whatever he said. “Are you being chased right now?”

A sharp nod.

“Okay. Do you want to go back to the Manor? B’s security is better than mine. This isn’t even one of my good safehouses, it was just the closest.”

That got a shake of Dick’s head and a shudder. Okay, _definitely_ not good. “Are you being chased _by B?”_

“No!” That was honest surprise in Dick’s voice. “It’s just – he can’t know about this, Jason. He _can’t.”_

“Okay. _Okay,_ Dick, I won’t tell him.” Dick’s fingers were getting way too close to the trigger for Jason’s liking. He might be able to take on Nightwing, right now, given how _off_ the older vigilante was, but he didn’t _want_ to when the guy was obviously panicking.

“Do you want me to track down whoever it is and shoot them?” Should be an easy question. Dick was Bruce’s kid.

“I…” Dick dodged Jason’s gaze. “I _shouldn’t.”_

Oh _shit._

_“Querido?”_ a woman’s voice called from the hall. “Richard, are you here? I have been looking for you.”

Dick jumped like he’d been electrocuted.

Jason grabbed his own personal piece off the coffee table. “Crawlspace. Under the cupboard.” He pointed to the area in the kitchen. Dick took off like a shot, holding the gun close. Maybe Jason _should_ have given him bullets.

A knock came at Jason’s door. How the _hell_ had she known which apartment to knock at, whoever she was? Did she have a tracker on Dick? This explained a hell of a lot about his disappearance. “I know you’re in there, _mi amor_. Come out! I want to see you.”

Jason deactivated the security around the door – at least, enough for him to open it roughly an inch. If the lady decided to push through, it was her funeral. “What the fuck do you want?” He let her see the gun in his right hand through the gap. With his left, he pulled out his phone and sent a single text message.

_sos n down sh31_

He’d already silenced the phone, but it immediately started vibrating as responses came in. Jason ignored them all. The woman on the other side of the door – Jason started memorizing features to look up later – _smiled_ as she saw him. “You are Jason, yes? Richard’s brother? Please, I need to talk to him.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, lady,” Jason lied to her face. “Nobody’s seen him for two weeks.” This was one of the safehouses the Bats knew about. The code in the text would tell them which one. Jason willed the others to get here _faster._

She frowned. “I know he is in here. I saw him go in the building. Richard?” She started to push at the door. Jason blocked her, but she was a _lot_ more muscular than he’d thought under that heavy jacket. “Richard, please come out! I need to see you!”

“Fuck _off,_ stalker lady.” Jason shoved at her. There was green-tinted _how dare she_ creeping in the corners of his gaze. If this didn’t end soon, he was going to do something he might regret. Later.

“Richard, please! Tell him about _us!”_ the woman shouted. “We were going to get _married!_ Please, I just want to talk!”

No sound from the inside of the apartment. Apparently, Dick wasn’t on board with the getting married plan. If he _had_ been, Jason would have had to kick his ass, because marrying somebody this fucking creepy seemed like a _bad idea._

“He’s not here, lady,” Jason snapped. “And if he _was,_ I wouldn’t let you talk to him.”

“Even if I know about your nightlife?”

_What._

Jason could see the woman’s smirk. “I know what your family does at night. How many arrest warrants still stand on all your heads. Not to mention the bounty prices from… less reputable sources. If you don’t let me talk to my lover, I’ll go straight to one of the Rogues’ Gallery with them. Perhaps Two-Face? I think he would be _very_ interested to know that his old friend is–”

“Catalina Flores.”

Jason had never been so happy to hear Batman’s growl in his _life._

The woman – Flores – whirled. “Batman. I’m trying to _talk_ to my _lover–”_

“Stalk him, more like.” Spoiler and Black Bat flanked Batman. Spoiler in particular looked ready to toss Flores out the nearest window. She’d never taken stalking cases well.

“You know I’ve worked with him before – I won’t hurt him; I just want to _talk–”_

“I’ve got video of her harassing me and trying to shove her way into the apartment,” Jason pointed out. “We don’t need to do this song and dance.”

Flores backed away from Batman, running straight into Jason’s chest. _“Querido,_ please, tell them! We were in love; we could be again–”

“Oh, _gross,”_ Spoiler snapped. Flores shrieked like a fury, but instead of jumping Spoiler, she whirled on Jason.

Thank God for months on years of practice. Jason yanked his finger off the trigger before he accidentally shot anyone and blocked her swing. He took her down methodically. It was _difficult_. More difficult than he was expecting. There was a _lot_ of muscle and training coming at him, and he wasn’t used to fighting in enclosed spaces like _fucking doorways–_

Then Black Bat jumped in and Flores was down and cuffed in less than ten seconds. Cass was terrifying. Jason was so glad Bruce had gotten her on their side.

Flores kept trying to ask Dick to intervene, but there was no reaction from the crawlspace. Jason didn’t know if he thought that was a good sign. On the one hand, at least Dick wasn’t defending the crazy lady who had scared him so bad he disappeared for weeks. On the other…

An image rose unbidden to Jason’s mind. Dick, clutching the gun, tears streaking down his cheeks. Flores ripping open the crawlspace, dragging him out. Dick raising the gun, pulling the trigger, only to find that Jason _hadn’t loaded the gun._ Dick collapsing in despair, letting Flores do whatever she wanted.

Jason wanted to be sick.

“Someone shut her _up,”_ he growled. He shoved a kick at one of Flores’ legs. “Do we have any idea who this bitch is?”

“Former FBI agent Catalina Flores,” Batman growled. “Also formerly the vigilante Tarantula, second. Convicted for the murder of Roland Desmond, a.k.a. Blockbuster. Nightwing turned her in. And himself, but the court ruled that “not getting in the way fast enough” didn’t qualify as accomplice to murder.”

“Sounds like him,” Jason admitted. “Wait a sec, Roland Desmond? The dude who burned down Haly’s? And N _turned her in?”_

“I did it for _him!”_ Flores wailed.

“Shut _up,”_ Spoiler snarled, and slammed her head into the floor. There was a wet _crunch_ that was probably her nose breaking.

“There is a period of time between Desmond’s death and Nightwing turning them in where both Tarantula and Nightwing were unaccounted for,” Batman said coldly. “There is no trace of where they were, or what they were doing. I suspect that the arrest had more to do with those weeks than the actual murder.”

Spoiler got a section of her cape in Flores’s mouth, which was good. Jason didn’t want to hear her answer to that.

“That would explain _way too much,”_ Jason hissed. “Can we get her out of here, _please.”_

“On it, boss!” Spoiler and Black Bat started dragging Flores away. Bruce hesitated at the doorway.

“He didn’t want you to know about… this,” Jason admitted. “Asked me not to tell you. Not that that worked.”

Bruce nodded. “I’ll be in the cave then. Look for whatever tracker she had on him.” Because of course he would have figured that out.

“I will.” Jason shut the door in his face. That was about how his conversations with Bruce usually went. “Hey Dickface, they dragged the crazy bitch away. You can come out now.”

No reaction. Jason grimaced, and drew up all Bruce’s mandatory lessons on dealing with trauma victims. “I’m gonna open up the crawlspace, okay? I’m not going to touch you, and you don’t have to come out.”

Still nothing. Jason made sure his steps towards the cupboard were audible. He unlatched the door – he’d been half-expecting Dick to hold it shut, but it opened easily. Then Jason just stepped back.

Dick looked even worse than when he’d shown up, somehow. There were tears on his cheeks, and he’d bitten _directly_ through his lip. He stared up at Jason like he was only half-seeing him.

“If I give you the first aid kit do you think you can fix that lip yourself?” Jason stepped back several paces. He made sure his hands were where Dick could see them.

For a long, slow moment, Jason thought he would have to drag Dick out of there to make sure he hadn’t hurt himself. But then Dick nodded slowly. He brought one shaking hand up to his lip and stared at the blood like he hadn’t noticed he was bleeding.

“I can get you some bullets for the gun, too. Sorry I didn’t give them to you before.” Jason stepped towards the big medkit – one that required him to go sideways, not towards Dick – and stacked a box of magazines on top of it before sliding it towards Dick. “You want some water?”

Another slow nod. _Progress._ Jason grabbed a sealed water bottle and tossed it to Dick. Dick even drank some of it and didn’t vomit it back up, which was good.

It took ten long minutes of silence, ignoring the demands for information from the others, for Dick to patch up his lip and finally speak. “Bruce knows.”

“He knows a lot of things, Dickiebird.” Jason thought he knew what Dick was talking about, but he wanted to be sure. “And you know him. If it has to do with emotions at all, he’ll never say anything.”

That got some of the hollowness in Dick’s eyes to go away. “That… that’s good. It’s good. I don’t… But he knows.”

Jason bit back a sigh. “Knows _what?”_

Dick ducked his head. “He knows that… I let Catalina–”

_“Hey.”_ Jason cut that _right_ off. “The way you were reacting? _Let_ is the wrong word. I heard enough about what happened with Blockbuster to know that you probably weren’t in the right state of mind to agree to _anything.”_ Especially not if this was what Jason thought it was.

_“We were in love!”_ Flores yelled in his memory. _God,_ Jason wanted to put a bullet in her brain.

“I wasn’t hurt,” Dick muttered. “I could have pushed her off. I could have _left._ But she… everything was so _hard…”_

“I believe you.”

Dick’s head snapped up. “What?”

“I used to help the working girls, sometimes,” Jason pointed out. “Sometimes it’s too hard. If you say it was, then it was.”

“I.” Dick took in a shaky breath. His head was tilted so his hair covered his face. “I. _I told her no,_ Jason, I swear–”

“I believe you.”

Dick curled his arms around himself. He’d bitten his lip so it started bleeding again. “I don’t. She’s _free,_ I thought she was _gone–”_

“Do you want me to kill her?”

Dick’s head snapped up. “You – for _me?”_

“Yeah. Brother privilege. Not that I don’t usually kill rapists when I find them, but this one’s _special.”_

“I don’t – Bruce would find out–”

“Fuck him. Would you sleep better if she were in the ground?”

That earned him a rough, humorless laugh. “I don’t think anything could help me sleep better at this point, Little Wing.”

Jason shrugged. “Alright then, but the offer stands.” He thought back to when he still lived in the alley, when he’d watch the working girls help each other after the bad clients. “This might not be a _good_ safehouse, but it’s got a shower. I’ll keep watch for you if you want.”

“You would?” The hope in Dick’s voice broke his heart.

“Sure thing, Dickwing.” Jason held out a hand to help Dick out of the crawlspace.

Something in his chest uncurled when his brother took it.


End file.
